“I have not done by him as I ought; it lies upon me with an awful weight,” he groaned. “Valentine, you must remedy the wrong. Take him in, and give him his proper share. I should like to see Tom. Some one fetch him.”
Tom had to be fetched from Islip. He came at once, his long legs skimming over the ground quickly; and he entered the sick-chamber with the cordial smile on his open face, and took his uncle’s hand.
“It shall all be remedied, Tom; all the injustice; and you shall have your due rights. I see now how unjust it was: I don’t know what God’s thinking of me for it. I wanted to make a good provision for my old age, you see; to be able to live at ease; and now there is no old age for me: God is taking me before it has come on.”
“Don’t distress yourself, Uncle Jacob; it will be all right. And I’m sure I have not thought much about it.”
“But others have,” groaned Jacob. “Your mother; and Mary Ann; and—and Squire Todhetley. They have all been on at me at times. But I shut my ears. Oh dear! I wish God would let me live a few years over again! I’d try and be different. What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”
And that was how he kept on the best part of the day. Then he called out that he wanted his will altered. Valentine brought in pen and ink, but his father motioned him away and said it must be done by Paul. So Paul the lawyer was got over from Islip, and was shut up alone with the sick man for a quarter-of-an-hour. Next the parson came, and read some prayers. But Jacob still cried out his piteous laments, at having no time to redeem the past, until his voice was too weak to speak. At nine o’clock in the evening all was over.
The disease that killed him must have been making silent progress for a good while, Cole said, when the truth was ascertained: but he had never seen it develop itself with so little warning, or prove fatal so quickly as in the case of Jacob Chandler.
II.
Jacob Chandler, solicitor, conveyancer, and land-agent, had died: and his son Valentine (possibly taking a leaf out of the history of Jonas Chuzzlewit) determined that he should at least be borne to the grave with honours, if he had never had an opportunity to specially bear them in life. Crabb churchyard was a show of mutes and plumes, and Crabb highway was blocked up with black coaches. As it is considered a compliment down with us to get an invitation to a funeral, and a great slight on the dead to refuse it, all classes, from Sir John Whitney, down to Massock, the brickmaker, and little Farmer Bean, responded to Valentine Chandler’s notes. Some people said that it was Valentine’s mother, the new widow, who wished for so much display; and probably they were right.